Court also snubs would-be Jeremy Lin party founder

By Yang Kuo-wen and Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter, with Staff writer

Fri, Feb 22, 2013 - Page 5

A staunch supporter of NBA player Jeremy Lin (林書豪) suffered another setback this week in his effort to establish a political party named after the first NBA player of Taiwanese descent, after the Taipei High Administrative Court on Tuesday upheld a decision of the Ministry of the Interior to reject his application to form such a party.

The case is still subject to appeal.

The applicant, surnamed Chu (朱), took his bid to establish the “Jeremy Lin Party” to the court after his application was repeatedly turned down by the ministry last year.

Chu first submitted his application on March 19 last year along with a constitution of his proposed party and a roster of its founders, as required by the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法). The ministry vetoed the application on the ground that using someone’s name as the appellation of a political party ran counter to the law and the common practices of democratic politics.

Stepping up his effort, Chu changed his first name to “Lin-shu-hao,” using the same Chinese character as Lin’s Chinese name. When he submitted his application the following month, he stated in the party charter that his purpose in establishing such a political association was to “emulate the spirit of Jeremy Lin.”

However, the ministry again denied the application, saying Chu’s proposed party did not conform to Article 44 and 45 of the Civil Associations Act, which stipulates that a political association should be “an association organized with a view to help form political volition and to promote political participation for the citizens” and “with an intention to recommend candidates to participate in public elections.”

After reviewing the ministry’s reasons for rejection, the court determined that the “Jeremy Lin Party” did not tally with the founding tenet of political associations and that its title — both in Mandarin and English — being completely identical to the name of the NBA player risked misleading the public.